Detector to peer deep into the 'Big Bang'

PORTLAND, Ore.  Super-sensitive polarization detectors developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and university partners will seek to measure whether the universe is forever expanding.

The new sensor was developed in collaboration with scientists at Princeton University, the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Chicago and announced during the annual meeting of the American Physical Society.

A theory called cosmic inflation could may be confirmed during an experiment to be held in 2010 in the Chilean desert. The powerful NIST sensors will be mounted on a special telescope in a converted shipping container.

An array of more than 1,000 of the new sensors, which measure B-mode polarization in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), will be mounted in monolithic arrays inside cryogenically-cooled telescopic cameras. If the inflation theory is finally confirmed, the sensors will then be used by NIST for civilian uses such as reducing glare in next-generation terahertz imaging systems that can see through the thick metal of shipping containers to detect hidden contraband.

Just as polarized sunglasses reduce glare, the sensitive microwave polarization sensing chips should be able to sharpen millimeter-wavelength (terahertz frequency) images.

In the 2010 experiment, the B-mode polarization detectors will seek to profile how rapid inflation of the universe occurred in the first instant after the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe. Two arrow-shaped antennas in the middle of the detector will measure cosmic microwave radiation at two different polarization directions at 145 GHz. The amount of polarization will be converted to heat by transition-edge sensors that use a superconducting metal that changes resistance in response to heat.

The remote location of the test, the no-moving-parts design and advanced signal processing and error correction algorithms are designed to remove errors from vibrations and magnetic interference that have foiled previous attempts at measuring the polarization of the CMB. It is thought that the CMB was created 13.7 billion years ago when the Big Bang created temperatures 10 billion times hotter than the world's most powerful particle collider--the Large Hadron Collider.

Besides attempting to confirm the inflation theory, whereby gravitational waves created during the Big Bang continue to leave telltale polarization in cosmic background radiation, the experiment could also provide insights into different unified theories of physics such as Superstring Theory. The theory maintains that the universe is based on an underlying vibrations from super-symmetric strings.